Do you work really hard, but get stuck on a B in your A-level English essays? Here's why and what you can do about it.

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Good AO5 can elevate your A-level English Literature essays from a B to an A*! Here's what it is and the different ways to do it.

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For me, when I was doing my A-levels, the hardest part of revision was actually knowing where to start! I don't think I was ever taught what effective revision looked like, or how to identify it!

On the other hand, for many of my students, it's memorising quotes. Some of them struggle to know which quotes to memorise in the first place. Other students know which quotes to learn, but have no clue how to go about it!

What about you?

Hi all!

I went to see the National Theatre's version of Hamlet this year (2025), starring Hiran Abeysekera, and I thought that it was an excellent form of AO5 for people studying Hamlet for their English Literature A-levels!

Here are some of the things I thought were interesting that you could talk about in your essays:

• Abeysekera chose to break the fourth wall quite often in his performance, highlighting the ridiculousness of some scenes and making us aware of the fact that he feels like everyone around him is performing. In some ways, his play-within-a-play, 'The Mousetrap', is the most real thing about the court. This aligns quite nicely with what Maynard Mack says in 'Tragedy and Madness' from the Edexcel Critical Anthology for Tragedy. It originally comes from his work, 'What happens in Shakespearean Tragedy', from Everybody's Shakespeare (1993).

the predicament of the artist – Shakespeare himself, perhaps – who, having been given the power to see the 'truth', can convey it only through poetry – what we commonly call a 'fiction', and dismiss.

• Ophelia was played by Francesca Mills, who notably also played another important character in a Jacobean Revenge Tragedy (ish), the titular Duchess in The Duchess of Malfi. She was in the Shakespeare's Globe (2023) performance, and apparently, she was incredible! She's also a little person, which I think emphasised for me the way the more powerful characters in the court (particularly the men) infantilise Ophelia. It makes it even more uncomfortable to me. Her portrayal of Ophelia was so interesting because she portrayed a usually quite demure character as very outgoing and confident. So, it felt like the machinations of the court wore her down and turned her into the mad version of herself that she becomes. I think there's some nice feminist readings that you can attach to this about how fights for power and honour can leave women as shells for their former selves.
• I found Geoffrey Streatfeild's portrayal of Polonius to be really interesting! For me, it was the first time that I saw Polonius as a truly sympathetic figure. He just seemed like a dad telling dad jokes and trying to do what was best for his children. The decision to make him strum on his guitar and the enthusiasm of Ophelia and Laertes to engage with him helped that. I loved that their encounter, where he talks in platitudes, is portrayed almost like a ritual. With the way Ophelia grabbed the money he handed when she finished his platitudes, it made it seem like this is something they regularly do, like some sort of family bonding activity. I genuinely teared up when Ophelia spoke about the death of her father. I truly believed her that she felt like all goodness had left the court.
• The biggest thing that stood out to me is that Gertrude is arguably the only character with a true positive change character arc! If you portray her as siding with Hamlet after the bedroom scene (like this version did), she realises that siding with Claudius was a bad idea and decides to take the poison to save her son. That's so interesting to me! Despite the misogyny of the court, Gertrude can be portrayed as the only character who learns anything. I'll go into that more in the comments.

But why does this matter?

Well, in your English Literature A-level exam, AO5 is all about being able to speak about alternate interpretations. So, the more you can say about different performances, adaptations, writings about the text, etc, the better.

There are multiple different ways to do AO5. So check out my dedicated post for more details on that!

In your exams, you should use AO5 to either back up your argument, or to explain why your argument is stronger than someone else's! So you can either talk about how an interpretation fits into your interpretation, or say 'while this person suggests this idea, some quotes from the text undermine that because...'

Reading posts where people talk about the creative decisions people made in performances and adaptations can really help you to come up with these interpretations! The creative decisions they make come from how they interpreted the text, so the more you can talk about that, the better!

I know both Edexcel and OCR expect you to use AO5 when you're writing essays about Hamlet in your exam, so this is useful to have!

How can you use this post to improve your AO5?

• First of all, read my blog post on AO5!
• Then, come back to this post and read it, along with the comments where I and other people add their thoughts on the creative decisions!
• Add the things you noticed about the creative decisions in the comments!
• Comment to other people's posts to explain what you think those creative decisions reveal about the creators' interpretations of the text.
• Bookmark AO5 posts related to the texts you're studying.
• Come back to these posts to make revision resources about AO5 or to write essays including AO5!

Please comment with your thoughts or ideas about the text – if you've seen it!

And don't be afraid to ask questions! I specifically made this community so you could always have a place to chat to an expert tutor (if I may say so myself), as well as other people studying the same subjects as you!

Hi all!

If you're studying Frankenstein for A-level English Literature and you haven't seen Guillermo del Toro's new adaptation on Netflix (del Toro, 2025), I highly recommend you give it a watch! It's a fantastic source of AO5 (alternate interpretations)!

In fact, I'd go as far as to say it's a crucial watch because I know plenty of people do it as one of their NEA Coursework texts, particularly if you do AQA English Literature A. In fact, it's on their list of recommended texts for the NEA on their website! It's also an exam set text option for the following exam boards:

• OCR (If you're doing The Gothic as your genre for Paper 2)
• Edexcel (paired with either The Handmaid's Tale or Never Let Me Go for 'Science and Society' in Component 2)
• Edexcel International (paired with either The Handmaid's Tale or Never Let Me Go for 'Science and Society' in Unit 3)
• CCEA (Paper 2 in the AS-level exams)

I'm aware that you don't need to use AO5 for Frankenstein if you're doing Edexcel or Edexcel International, but it can still help you to form your own interpretations and bolster your AO1! We can speak about that another time. And you definitely need AO5 for all the others, including for an NEA!

Plus, the cinematography is amazing, so I think it's just worth anyone watching if they want a better understanding of visual storytelling and a good technical mastery of things like colour grading (but that's a discussion better had in th Media and Film space). There are places when the script was a little bit awkward, in my opinion. For example, I felt that his conflict with his father after his mum died was too abrupt and came out of nowhere. Overall, though there was so much there that you can learn from and talk about in your exams!

So I thought it would be useful to create an AO5 discussion thread for us to compile all our thoughts into one place. The aim is to help you notice interesting things that happened in the film adaptaion, and to also give you some practice in using this information to say interesting things about AO5 alternative interpretations.

My initial analysis

So, let's start with some initial analysis from me to get us into the grove. Before I start, I want to say that I'm not the authority on Frankenstein. At A-level, the most interpretation is yours.

That's the reason you're writing essays in your exams in the first place! The examiner wants to see that you can have interesting and nuanced personal interpretations and argue them well!

So feel free to disagree with anything that I'm posting here and add your own thoughts! The best A-level study community is one where the students join in and try out analysis for themselves. Talking through your ideas is the most effective way for you to improve if you're trying to hit that A*.

Here are some of the things that I noticed about the text that you might want to use in your essays:

• They had the Creature attack the whole ship that Victor Frankenstein is on at the beginning of the film, attacking and killing anyone who was within reach. This is quite different from the original version(s) of the text, where the Creature only hurts people who are directly associated with Victor. For me, it makes him seem more dangerous and overall a threat to humanity since his violence has spilt out towards random, unrelated people. In the novel, he's still killing innocent people (so he's still committing evil), but it's much more targeted and intentional. You get more of a sense that he's trying to make a living hell for Victor specifically, but that he's not a threat to humans outside of that. By making the Creature more willing to commit indiscriminate violence, it makes Victor seem more reasonable at the beginning – until we realise how badly he's treated the Creature.
• In the original text, Victor has a good relationship with his parents. He goes off the radar at university once he becomes obsessed with creating life. His attempt to play God or act as a Prometheus-like figure alienates him from his social connections. It's also quite relatable! I know I've definitely had moments at university where my family texted me like, '...Hey. Haven't heard from you in a while. You still alive?' I think for me, making Victor have such a healthy family dynamic in the text means there's nothing to absolve him from his actions. He doesn't have a tortured past that he can blame for how he is. It also adds to a more postcolonial reading of the text, in my opinion: those with privilege and power over others can do great harm if they use their power and influence in self-serving ways or try to act superior to others (like he does with the Creature). Victor attempts to create a person in his image and then is disgusted by his own creation, just like how 18th and 19th-century colonisers attempted to force colonised people to act and dress in their image, only to demonise them for it. In del Toro's version, though, he has a really tumultuous, abusive relationship with his father. I did wonder if that was a nod to the 'hurt people hurt people' or 'the child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth' idea that's quite prevalent in how we speak about Incels who feel unable to engage in normal social interactions and take their disillusionment with superiority complexes and violence? It could be that in today's society, del Toro believes the message we need to hear is that a lack of community breeds violence. So, he emphasises that message by making Victor's upbringing mirror the Creature's much more than it did before. It also highlights the cycles of violence that can happen in families: Victor was abused by his father, who was deeply disappointed in him. So, Victor perpetuates that same trauma to his own 'son', the Creature.
• The idea of Victor, his brother and the Creature all 'competing' for the attention and affection of Elizabeth was an interesting choice for me. To be honest, it wasn't one that I particularly enjoyed. I think it flattens Victor's motivations, suggesting that men's actions revolve around their relationships with women. There might be something Freudian there (especially since Elizabeth and Victor's mother are both played by the same actress, Mia Goth). However, I think it downplays the message that disgust can make us act irrationally and dismiss people who are just as worthy of kindness and humanity as we are. There's a real postcolonial idea to that, which I alluded to earlier. European colonisers saw themselves as superior to the colonised and enslaved people they ruled over and expressed a lot of disgust for these marginalised groups. They didn't need to be jealous of them to threat them that way. They just needed to be ruled by their disgust and superiority. Seeing the Creature as a threat for Elizabeth's attention makes him seem like more of an equal, which undermines that part of the text, for me. By adding the parts where Elizabeth seeks to comfort and show kindness to the Creature, I suppose del Toro is trying to create a dichotomy between people who see others as competition and people who empathise with their fellow people, and also showing us through the abuse of both Victor and the Creature that cruelty can eradicate that empathy.

I've said a lot of stuff about a 'postcolonial reading' of the text that I know might seem like a stretch at first! But there's so much to it if you know where to look! Mary Shelley and her husband were both slave abolitionists and critics have argued that Frankenstein is a message about slavery and imperialism. Mary Shelley's mum, Mary Wollstonecraft, was involved in early Feminist movements and wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was built

AO5 analysis from a YouTuber

I found the video on the Frankenstein discourse by Kaz Rowe on YouTube particularly interesting for helping you to make sense of AO5 about Guillermo del Toro's film adaptation. It explains the creative liberaties del Toro took, and gives you some insight into how his creative decisions impact the way we might interpret the characters and messages of the text.

I would advice against using YouTubers as AO5 in their own right. Some of the exam boards are quite picky about who they accept as a 'critic' to quote from, since anyone can post to YouTube without peer review or scrutiny from a publisher. Their videos don't have to be checked to see how accurate their statements are or how much of a stretch they're making in their analysis. They can be especially picky for texts that already have so much critical writing about them out there, such as Frankenstein. After all, since there's so much out there, why are you relying on something that isn't as tested? Why aren't you reading an essay instead?

However, I would say that if a YouTuber is talking about a performance or adaptation they've seen, that can be a really powerful way to help you understand the AO5 and use it properly. They're basically doing some of the work for you: figuring out what the creative decisions mean about the creator's interpretation of the text.

So, I've attached a Kaz Rowe's YouTube video for you to have a watch here. It's quite long, but well worth the watch (even if you have to do it in phases with big gaps in between).

But why does this matter?

Well, in your English Literature A-level exam, AO5 is all about being able to speak about alternate interpretations. So, the more you can say about different performances, adaptations, writings about the text, etc, the better.

There are multiple different ways to do AO5. So check out my dedicated post for more details on that!

In your exams, you should use AO5 to either back up your argument, or to explain why your argument is stronger than someone else's! So you can either talk about how an interpretation fits into your interpretation, or say 'while this person suggests this idea, some quotes from the text undermine that because...'

Reading posts where people talk about the creative decisions people made in performances and adaptations can really help you to come up with these interpretations! The creative decisions they make come from how they interpreted the text, so the more you can talk about that, the better!

Particularly for the NEA, the standards for what counts as AO5 are much higher, so it's worth making sure you've got some good stuff!

How can you use this post to improve your AO5?

• First of all, read my blog post on AO5!
• Then, come back to this post and read it, along with the comments where I and other people add their thoughts on the creative decisions!
• Add the things you noticed about the creative decisions in the comments!
• Comment to other people's posts to explain what you think those creative decisions reveal about the creators' interpretations of the text.
• Bookmark AO5 posts related to the texts you're studying.
• Come back to these posts to make revision resources about AO5 or to write essays including AO5!

Please comment with your thoughts or ideas about the text – if you've seen it!

As a bit of an ice-breaker, I thought I would ask you all to reply and let me know what texts you're studying at school!

Hi Literature students!

Welcome to the new literature space on Shani's Tutoring! I'm really excited to have somewhere to properly help you improve.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to start posting essays and extracts of stuff I'm working on in the 'Documents' section. Please keep an eye out for that.

I'll make a post on here when there's something new to update, so you should get an email digest about the new activity once a week.

I'm going to avoid emailing you immediately unless it's important. Unless there's a crucial announcement, this should be the only email you get about a single post from this space.

I made this space so that we can:

• Share tips and advice on getting the best grade in English Literature.
• Have a safe space to vent to people who are in a similar boat to us.
• Share useful documents like essays and fact sheets.

Please, feel free to post as many topics as you'd like. I'll be here on a regular basis to read through and comment. I'd also really appreciate it if you did the same to your fellow users. Make everyone feel at home!

If you have any questions about how this new community works, please do let me know! I'm happy to fill you in!